Letter to the editor

A letter to the editor (sometimes abbreviated LTTE or LTE) is a letter sent to a publication about issues of concern from its readers. Usually, letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through conventional mail or electronic mail.

Letters to the editor are most frequently associated with newspapers and newsmagazines. However, they are sometimes published in other periodicals (such as entertainment and technical magazines), and radio and television stations. In the latter instance, letters are sometimes read on the air (usually, on a news broadcast or on talk radio).

In academic publishing, letters to the editor of an academic journal are usually open postpublication reviews of a paper, often critical of some aspect of the original paper. The authors of the original paper sometimes respond to these with a letter of their own. Controversial papers in mainstream journals often attract numerous letters to the editor. Good citation indexing services list the original papers together with all replies. Depending on the length of the letter and the journal's style, other types of headings may be used, such as peer commentary. There are some variations on this practice. Some journals request open commentaries as a matter of course, which are published together with the original paper, and any authors' reply, in a process called open peer commentary. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals now allows unsolicited letters to the editor (and authors' reply) to appear in the same print issue of the journal, as long as they are sent in the interval between the electronic publication of the original paper and its appearance in print.

List of Doctor Who villains

This is a list of villains from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. For other, related lists, see below.

A

Helen A

Helen A, seen in The Happiness Patrol (1988), is the ruler of a human colony on Terra Alpha. She was intended to be a caricature of then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 2010, Sylvester McCoy told the Sunday Times: "Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered."

Abzorbaloff

The Abzorbaloff is a monster designed by nine-year-old William Grantham of Colchester, Essex for a "Design a Doctor Who Monster" competition held by Blue Peter.

The competition was announced in July 2005, and received 43,920 entries. These were judged by Blue Peter editor Richard Marson, presenter Gethin Jones, Doctor Who producer Russell T Davies and Tenth Doctor David Tennant. The first prize for the competition was to have the monster appear in an episode of Doctor Who. Tennant announced the winner on Blue Peter on 17 August 2005. Conditions of the competition meant that the monster had to be able to be made from prosthetics and not require CGI.